Posted: 2008-04-22 05:47pm
Probably 72 hours from the last posting.CaptainChewbacca wrote:So, Surlethe has until Wednsday midnight, or is it Thursday?
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Probably 72 hours from the last posting.CaptainChewbacca wrote:So, Surlethe has until Wednsday midnight, or is it Thursday?
You know, if he does that, V is going to just say 'Since you've ignored these other arguments I'm going to take that as a concession'. He did it often enough in the original thread.Darth Wong wrote:There is indeed something to be said for focusing on one or two key flaws in his argument rather than trying to address all of them. The problem with his argument is that it contains so many flaws that one could go gray trying to address them all. If one could either focus only on the most critical ones or try to condense many of them into classes of flaws, it would be helpful.
It's tempting to try and answer every single piece of bullshit that someone throws your way, but that's falling into the Darkstar trap, where he tries to exhaust you with sheer quantity, repetition, and obfuscation.
How about just trimming superfluous nested quotes? My eyes would thank you.Surlethe wrote:I've worked the past hour on a reply, and I'm nearly halfway through (I count 20 or so points remaining to reply to; I've answered 16 so far). As far as cutting through the crap to the key flaws in his argument, I'm content so far being thorough, as long as Voluntaryist doesn't start doing sentence-by-sentence dissections of my replies. After all, 72 hours is plenty of time now that school's winding down. If it does start to drag, though, I'll consider addressing key points.
He can address classes of arguments as a group, and compose an essay format response, of the type that is typical in editorial exchanges or verbal debates. The formatting mechanism of actually quoting pieces of your opponent's text in your own response is a web peculiarity and does not need to be strictly observed as long as you address all your opponent's main points. If it so happens that he repeats the same basic point eight times, you really only need to address it once. But if you quote one of those eight repetitions prior to your response, he might choose to be dishonest and rhetorically ask why you "ignored" the other seven. Better to simply summarize a class of his arguments in your own words and then respond to it, which is how written or verbal debates are often conducted outside Internet forums.CaptainChewbacca wrote:You know, if he does that, V is going to just say 'Since you've ignored these other arguments I'm going to take that as a concession'. He did it often enough in the original thread.Darth Wong wrote:There is indeed something to be said for focusing on one or two key flaws in his argument rather than trying to address all of them. The problem with his argument is that it contains so many flaws that one could go gray trying to address them all. If one could either focus only on the most critical ones or try to condense many of them into classes of flaws, it would be helpful.
It's tempting to try and answer every single piece of bullshit that someone throws your way, but that's falling into the Darkstar trap, where he tries to exhaust you with sheer quantity, repetition, and obfuscation.
Definitely happening. I'm keeping it to two maximum nested quotes.CaptainChewbacca wrote:How about just trimming superfluous nested quotes? My eyes would thank you.Surlethe wrote:I've worked the past hour on a reply, and I'm nearly halfway through (I count 20 or so points remaining to reply to; I've answered 16 so far). As far as cutting through the crap to the key flaws in his argument, I'm content so far being thorough, as long as Voluntaryist doesn't start doing sentence-by-sentence dissections of my replies. After all, 72 hours is plenty of time now that school's winding down. If it does start to drag, though, I'll consider addressing key points.
The person(s) who discover a cure for diabetes is GUARANTEED to win a Nobel Prize, so I don't think big pharma is thinking they'll make more money by forcing diabetics to buy insulin for the rest of their lives. It's more likely that, in the past, they TRIED to find a cure for diabetes, failed REPEATEDLY, tried to find out WHY they failed, failed to do that, became disheartened and gave up.Darth Servo wrote:I'm not even talking about forcing scientific developments to occur. I'm talking about the fact that big pharma isn't even trying to discover a cure for diabetes, in spite of millions of people demanding it. Why do they do this? Because they make far more money with us buying insulin for the rest of our lives.
Is he? I won't let his stuff slide so fast. Somalia got the following things from collapse of government:He's right about Somalia.
And then you need to ask yourself which part of Somalia are you talking about? You've got one portion in the north, Somaliland, which wants full independence and has its own government (they're relatively stable). Puntland, Somaliland's eastern neighbor, wants autonomy as part of a restored Somali Republic but is effectively not part of the TFR right now. In the south you have the Transitional Federal Republic of Somalia which while internationally recognized as the official government of the country it is almost solely dependent on Ethiopia for support (arguably few Somalis support this government). And this doesn't include the minor factions, disputed territories or southern areas which are complete clusterfucks.Stas Bush wrote:Is he? I won't let his stuff slide so fast. Somalia got the following things from collapse of government:
a) civil war
b) general war
c) another collapse of currency
Due to the war, it's almost impossible to evaluate it's economic performance (and honestly, even the most optimistic projections have Somalia's growth at around 2%). After a privatization crisis in Somalia. And the Civil War, which essentially ravaged the economy in 1989-1990 - it's not hard to imagine the economy somewhat recuperating from large Civil War ravage, you know. And the growth rates of Somalia obviously fall behind most nations with a central authority, hell, even dictatorial ones.
Of course he can. People who employ the broken record debate strategy can go on ad-nauseum.TC Pilot wrote:Surlethe: 4 Voluntaryist: 0
I wonder if the moron can scrap together a reply in three days.
He requested a 1-day extension and was granted it. I don't think he got a penalty.Darth Servo wrote:Of course he can. People who employ the broken record debate strategy can go on ad-nauseum.TC Pilot wrote:Surlethe: 4 Voluntaryist: 0
I wonder if the moron can scrap together a reply in three days.
And what happened to Valleytard's late penalty?
Little joke between me and TC.CaptainChewbacca wrote:He requested a 1-day extension and was granted it. I don't think he got a penalty.
Quiet, you! Score keeping is harder than you think!Darth Servo wrote:And what happened to Valleytard's late penalty?
A Nobel prize has a cash value of about $1.7 million. This is a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of money for a pharmaceutical company (On the order of 0.1% of their multi-billion dollar marketing budgets). It's not the least bit controversial to point out that pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to develop cures instead of treatments.Sidewinder wrote:The person(s) who discover a cure for diabetes is GUARANTEED to win a Nobel Prize, so I don't think big pharma is thinking they'll make more money by forcing diabetics to buy insulin for the rest of their lives.
Thanks. He actually mentioned Hong Kong as an example of the good things about free markets; I took him at his word because the reply was taking long enough as-is and I didn't want to research all of his examples. If you have any links to outside sources verifying your description of Hong Kong, feel free to post them.Terralthra wrote:Surlethe, it's not like you need the help at this point, but if you should need an example of free markets not working as Voluntaryist claims they will, you need only mention Hong Kong. Despite having little to no restriction on starting a business or owning a business, almost every industry is controlled by monopolies, cartels, and other forms of oligolopolies. New competitors are simply beaten down or bought out, and consumer prices and customer satisfaction are both among the worst in the developed world.